This chapter revisits the problem of the relationship between normative vocabulary and the normativity of law from the perspective of Robert Brandom’s inferentialism. It is sometimes claimed that applying normative language in the legal context is strictly connected with law’s normativity, understood as its reason-giving capacity. In the chapter, I provide an inferentialist reading of the role of normative language in law and its relationship with the normativity of law, where normative practice stands in a content-generating relationship with normative language. Section 1 provides an overview of problems related to the use of normative language in law. Section 2 is devoted to the critique of the perspectivalists’ reading of normative statements, which aims at separating the use of normative language from deliberation about whether or not law provides its addresses with reasons for action. Section 3 introduces a general inferentialist framework for discussing normativity and the content-generating features of discursive practice, which is then applied in Sect. 4 to provide an inferentialist interpretation of the role of normative language in law. Section 5 highlights the features of the relationship between normative language and normativity of law, based on Brandom’s version of neopragmatism. On this view, the content of normative language in law depends on the normativity of legal practice, which is understood as a justificatory duty on the part of the practitioners. I conclude by observing that the inferentialist interpretation of normative language in law can lead to the adoption of a novel explanatory route between legal situations and legal norms, hence departing from legal perspectivalism.

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The Normativity of Law and Normative Vocabularies in Law: The Inferentialist Explanatory Route

  • Weronika Dzięgielewska

摘要

This chapter revisits the problem of the relationship between normative vocabulary and the normativity of law from the perspective of Robert Brandom’s inferentialism. It is sometimes claimed that applying normative language in the legal context is strictly connected with law’s normativity, understood as its reason-giving capacity. In the chapter, I provide an inferentialist reading of the role of normative language in law and its relationship with the normativity of law, where normative practice stands in a content-generating relationship with normative language. Section 1 provides an overview of problems related to the use of normative language in law. Section 2 is devoted to the critique of the perspectivalists’ reading of normative statements, which aims at separating the use of normative language from deliberation about whether or not law provides its addresses with reasons for action. Section 3 introduces a general inferentialist framework for discussing normativity and the content-generating features of discursive practice, which is then applied in Sect. 4 to provide an inferentialist interpretation of the role of normative language in law. Section 5 highlights the features of the relationship between normative language and normativity of law, based on Brandom’s version of neopragmatism. On this view, the content of normative language in law depends on the normativity of legal practice, which is understood as a justificatory duty on the part of the practitioners. I conclude by observing that the inferentialist interpretation of normative language in law can lead to the adoption of a novel explanatory route between legal situations and legal norms, hence departing from legal perspectivalism.